AMLC: Kin, victims of cybersex transactions receive payments themselves

MANILA, Philippines — The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) bared on Thursday that relatives and victims of online sexual exploitation are mostly the ones who also receive payments for the transactions.

“What we discovered is that the majority of our suspicious transaction reports belong to the first two modus operandi. And these are the family members and the victims themselves,” AMLC executive director Mel Racela said during the Senate hearing on the agency’s proposed 2021 budget.

“The first is one is to one. Meaning, the perpetrator and the victim are dealing directly. The second modus is family operations meaning the perpetrator is dealing with a mature relative and the mature relative is convincing their minor relative to perform the activity,” he explained.

The third modus involves a “big-time syndicate,” Racela added.

The Philippines saw an increase in financial transactions linked to online sexual exploitation of children in the recent months amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, AMLC said in its report published Wednesday.

Some 5,634 suspicious transactions were reported in May 2020, almost 10 times higher than the 597 transactions recorded for the same period in 2019.

For the first half of 2020, AMLC said it received almost double of 10,633 suspicious transaction reports it received in 2019 which totaled to 20,448.

/MUF